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Road to The California Open Championships!

In the past year, I have competed in 11 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournaments. After 30 plus years of training in martial arts, that is the most I have competed in a single year! It has been a fun journey and a great learning experience. This past weekend I competed in the Five Grappling California open Championship. I felt the urge to write about this particular event because I faced a few set backs which made it particularly challenging.
As you all know, I just released a new dvd. This is the first dvd I have ever produced on my own. Im a trainer, not a dvd maker, marketer or even a computer guy for that matter. So once I embarked on the making of this dvd became a long drawn out process. It was all trial and error. That and having to run my gym SoCal mma consumed all of my time. It was difficult to even find the energy to train. So, I was having inconsistency in my jiu jitsu training. However, I never neglected my Kettle-Jitsu training. I make it a point to train with my classes 4 times a week. I lead by example. I think it is important as a trainer to do so.
Even though I was really busy, I set a goal to compete in the California open. The dvd was out already, so there was a bit of a load of my back. A few weeks into my training, I strained my hip really bad. It was so bad I had to see a doctor. Of course he said I needed to lay off the Jiu Jitsu as well. Even though my hip wasn’t well, the Kettle-Jitsu training didn’t bother me much. So, I decided that since I cant train jiu jitsu, I will focus on intensifying my kb and bodyweight training. For me this means doing more rounds and increasing the weight of the kettlebell. Since my dvd was out. We were working the whole 8 week program from it at my gym. We followed it to a T. I steadily increased the weight until I was using a 50lb kettlebell for most of the workouts.
Then my hip started feeling a lot better. Good enough to start training jiu jitsu again. But by then, the tournament was really close. I don’t even think a full 2 weeks of training bjj would make a difference. To make matters worse, after a rolling session, my knee somehow got tweaked. It started to swell. So the bjj training again went out the window. Because of the knee injure, I couldn’t even train the week before. I had to scale down the Kettlejitsu training to let my body heal before the tournament. But the knee injury was enough to make my weight off. So this caused another problem. I had to cut 5 lbs the day before the competition in order to make weight.
So after all of that, I competed and won all of my matches by submission. I was extremely happy by the outcome because of all of the adversity I had to endure. I went in there with my Kettle-Jitsu conditioning and experience and still pulled off the victory. This is what really separates what I do, from other fitness systems. Kettle-Jitsu works every aspect of your conditioning, coordination, strength, agility, speed and focus. All of these of which are very important to combat athletes. How may fitness systems can claim that?
Nowadays there is this big strength trend. Everybody is preaching how important it is to be strong. You see people all over facebook talking about deadlifting this much or that much. Is it more important to be strong, or to be fit? What consequences will you face after years and years of heavy lifting? Fitness should be everyone’s priority. Why is it so important to be strong? Does your job require it? Safety and functionality of your fitness regime are more important. With Kettle-Jitsu, I do not emphasize using a lot of weight. It is up to the practitioner to decide whether they want to go heavier or not. Even then, I stay away of using extreme amounts of weight. Even as a competitive athlete, I don’t feel a need for it.
So don’t get sucked into the new “strength trend.” All you need is kettlebell and bodyweight. Kettle-Jitsu is for everyone! It even helped me compete and win the California open with minimal jiu jitsu training! But remember, you don’t have to be a fighter to train like one!